How would you try to fit in to a management position at a big-time record label after obsessing over rock music in your teens, then slacking off work all the way through your 20s? Maybe you’d panic and buy $1,500 worth of picture frames and other trinkets to decorate your office, to make it look like you had a life. Meet Dan Kennedy in his new memoir, Rock On: An Office Power Ballad.
Rock ‘n’ Roll can’t wait
How would you try to fit in to a management position at a big-time record label after obsessing over rock music in your teens, then slacking off work all the way through your 20s? Maybe you’d panic and buy $1,500 worth of picture frames and other trinkets to decorate your office, to make it look like you had a life. Meet Dan Kennedy in his new memoir, Rock On: An Office Power Ballad.
Kennedy lands a job as director of creative marketing at Atlantic Records with no real qualification aside from being a lifelong fan of music, something, Kennedy is aware, he has in common with most human beings.
As a 30-something who grew up on a steady diet of Kiss, Led Zeppelin and punk music, he is beyond stoked to be working in the rock ‘n’ roll biz. That is, until he realizes his job is little more than a glorified office gig. There are boring meetings, sassy assistants and plenty of moments where he just pretends to look busy.
Though the majority of his time is spent in the four walls of an office or conference room, Kennedy highlights several assignments that take him out of his more or less average job, and into production and editing studios. He works on ad campaigns for Phil Collins (25 years of love songs, yeah!), The Donnas, The Darkness and other established or up-and-coming musicians.
These parts of the book indulge the reader in voyeuristic celebrity fascination, with fun facts such as: Jewel looks pretty average in person (Kennedy doesn’t even recognize her in the hallway until she’s yards behind him) and rapper Fat Joe will order in barbeque to a commercial shoot if the cheese and cracker trays don’t satisfy him (he is Fat Joe).
Why are famous people more interesting than us? Well, they aren’t more interesting than Kennedy. He’s really the star of the book. He portrays himself as an average guy, a music lover like one of us, giving us a sneak peek into an industry most of us have been consumers of since we first heard the radio.
Kennedy is perceptive, funny and amusingly paranoid??mostly about saying or doing the wrong thing, and also about getting fired. He can feel from the get-go that this job he lucked into will only last so long. A constant stream of jokes is what seems to keep his worries at bay.
The only drawback to Kennedy’s goofy sense of humor is too many inner-dialogues. At any given moment he is daydreaming about where he’d rather be, what he’d rather be doing or how he’d prefer his current situation would resolve itself. It seems like most of the conversations in the book take place in his head. Often this little trick is refreshing, but sometimes, it takes the reader too far away from the action to be welcomed.
Kennedy’s humor is at its best in the goofy sidebar-type excerpts he sandwiches between chapters, like a cheat sheet on how to become a “chart-topping rock-and-roll star embraced by major-label marketing executives and corporate radio” and a list of uncool merchandising ideas for bands.
The narrative is mostly linear and increasingly peppered with nostalgia for the good old days of rock ‘n’ roll, or at least what Kennedy imagined the good old days were like. Can’t we all imagine, though? Real, authentic rock stars hanging around all the time, rockin’ out in the hallways, partying in the conference rooms.
But that just isn’t how it is.
Now, commercialism is rampant. And merchandising seems to be just as important as the music. Rock On starts to get depressing when one of the head honchos at the company explains to Kennedy and a roomful of middle and upper management that they’re not in the music industry anymore, they’re in the “lifestyle industry.” This is the premise of the book–and it’s a sad fact for any music lover. Thankfully, Kennedy breaks the news to us gently, softening it with his wry humor.
Two-thirds of the way through the book Kennedy offers a remedy for this heartbreak in a chapter entitled “Salvations of the Stooges.” Iggy Pop and the Stooges live in concert! He describes every crazy move Iggy makes on stage, and the adoration he has for this true rock god is evident. Through this scene, Kennedy basically says they don’t make music like they used to, or maybe just that nothing ever seems as big and exciting as it does when we’re younger.
Overall, Rock On is an enjoyable read, and quick too. The barely 200-page book flies by, propelled by a subtly snide critique of office life and a bittersweet message about growing up. Anyone who likes music, a goofy sense of humor and wants to read a different kind of memoir should pick this one up.
Rock On: An Office Power Ballad***1/2$14.95
Dan Kennedy, author of Rock On: An Office Power Ballad, will be at Powell’s City of Books on Burnside Thursday, Feb. 28 at 7:30 p.m. for a book reading and signing.
